Cold War

The name given to the tension-filled, 45-year period from the end of World War II to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The tension was due to the competitive relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both nations emerged from the war as the world's leading superpowers, and archrivals, having ideologically opposite political and economic systems. Although already unmatched in military capabilities, the two nations engaged in an active nuclear arms race. The frightening standoff never escalated into any direct warfare—the threat of world destruction apparently keeping relative peace.

The term cold war to describe the U.S.-Soviet relationship was popularized by the 1947 publication of [Page 85]the journalist Walter Lippmann's book titled The Cold War. The term can be attributed to a comment made by the British author George Orwell two years earlier, who stated that a world living under a nuclear threat was not a world at peace but rather in “a cold war.” For more information, see Lippmann (1947) and Orwell (1945).